Process control systems for controlling factory, manufacturing, processing operations, and the like often use a control system of distributed sensors and actuators to monitor and control operations like food, chemical, or materials processing. Sensors monitor, for example, flow rate, pressure, and temperature of processed materials, while actuators, for example, control the opening of valves and the regulation of heat. A factory processing operation may rely on hundreds, or even thousands, of such sensors and actuators, with the sensors and actuators being distributed throughout the factory process site.
As process control technology has advanced, in many cases computational resources have become more distributed. Older control systems, for example, relied on highly centralized control interfaces to coordinate communication and computation for an entire process. On the other hand, many more modern control systems distribute these features among the various processors in the control system. In one example of this distribution of resources, process variable transmitters (e.g., in combination, a process variable sensor, a corresponding signal processor, and a corresponding communication interface) are being equipped with increasing onboard intelligence. An analog sensor signal can be digitized and processed (e.g., filtered, linearized, temperature-compensated, etc.) by a processor local to the transmitter. However, due to such limitations as power and processor size constraints, locally compensated process variable values are updated at slower rates than raw, unprocessed values. Thus, a process variable transmitter that provides an output representing a process variable that has been filtered, linearized, temperature-compensated, and the like at a faster rate than previously available is desired.